It was my intention when I started the Mouse & Trowel blog to pass along tips and ideas that would make it easier to blog, help increase your readership, and maybe make a little money in the process. It was also my intention to highlight great garden blogs and websites all year round, not just during the Mouse & Trowel Awards. To put it plainly, I have done a crappy job of it so far. From here on out, I promise to start doing all of the things I meant to do on this blog.
For those of you who are interested in making a concerted effort to increase your traffic, today’s post may be of interest.
StumbleUpon is a social bookmarking site. The gist of it is that you sign up, create a profile, and start submitting sites that you like. That’s the first part, and that’s where you’ll submit posts in the hopes of attracting new readers. But it won’t get you anywhere if you don’t do the next part. The other part of StumbleUpon involves interacting with other Stumblers by becoming fans or friends, rating or reviewing each other’s content, and learning along the way what type of content strikes a chord with StumbleUpon users. I’ve seen plenty of people throw up a profile, submit their own sites or posts, and expect to attract new readers. It doesn’t work that way. When you use StumbleUpon, and become friends with other stumblers, they see every site you review. Depending on your friends, they may review your submission. When they do that, all of their friends see it, and so on and so forth. If you’ve submitted useful, unique content, there’s a good chance you’ll see a nice increase in traffic, as well as attract a few new regular readers.
What to Submit
Which brings us to the question of what to submit. It’s best to keep in mind that the typical SU user is in their early twenties to mid-thirties. Posts that contain useful information about starting a garden, easy-to-grow plants, or book and product reviews tend to do well. In my experience, I’ve seen over 33,000 hits from StumbleUpon in the last year. The overwhelming majority of those hits came from two articles/posts: Ten Vegetables You Can Grow in Shade and Ten Long-Blooming Perennials. What do they have in common? 1. They’re useful for beginning gardeners, and 2. They’re straightforward. I know plenty of you do posts like this, and they could definitely earn you some nice traffic from StumbleUpon.
Drawbacks to StumbleUpon
There are a few drawbacks, so it’s good to keep them in mind. 1. It takes time. It’s best to login at least a few times a week and submit/review stuff. You also have to be willing to interact with other people, because that is what will drive your traffic.
2. You can’t just submit your own stuff. If you keep submitting only your own posts, you will reach a threshold where SU won’t allow you to submit anymore from that URL. To prevent this, be sure to submit other pages and posts as well. Other garden blog posts you like would be a nice touch 
3. While some SU users will stick around and become regular readers, the vast majority will come, check out the post they saw submitted on SU, and leave. It’s good for traffic, and for exposing more people to your blog, but most SU traffic is not long-term.
4. SU users generally don’t bother clicking on ads when they visit a site. If your goal is to attract traffic so you get more Google clicks or whatever, this won’t work for you. SU users come, look at the post, and leave. They don’t tend to explore the site and click around.
As I said, these are generalities. I have a few subscribers who came to me from StumbleUpon, so every once in a while, one will explore and become a regular reader.
Final Thoughts
You may be wondering what the point would be of using a site like SU. After all, the gardening community already has sites like myfolia.com that connect gardeners, as well as a multitude of garden blog directories. The thing is that with garden-centric social networking sites, you’re preaching to the choir. That’s fine, but if you want to attract a new type of reader, maybe someone who likes gardening but isn’t involved in the online gardening community, a place like SU is a good place to reach them.
If you want to see what a StumbleUpon profile looks like, you can visit mine at cvanderlinden.stumbleupon.com. You’ll see that my stumbles tend to be pretty diverse. I don’t keep it limited to gardening stuff. You may want to, or you may choose to be an eclectic stumbler like me. That’s totally up to you, and there is no wrong or right way. If you decide to sign up, send me a message over there
Happy Gardenblogging!
Colleen Vanderlinden
http://www.inthegardenonline.com
http://www.mouseandtrowel.org
